


small hours

by fathomfive



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Shippy Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathomfive/pseuds/fathomfive
Summary: Awake on a restless night, Fjord and Caduceus make tea and conversation.The wind reversed; the smell of camphor hit Fjord’s nose. With it came—not a scent, but a sudden sense of green-growing life, of rushing water and turned earth. It hit him like a bolt to the chest, which was ridiculous. He missed it as soon as it was gone.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Fjord
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Hold Me: A Comfort Prompfest





	small hours

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place at some vague point before c2e65. it was written for a comfort prompt fest on Dreamwidth, for the prompt "a nice cup of tea."

Fjord sank like a stone in his dreams. He was numb and the light of the moon was gone, it was all gone, and soon he would run out of breath. The ship had already vanished from sight. He would not find it again.

He woke up sweating. He didn’t make a sound, because he had a lot of practice not making a sound or in fact indicating in any way that something was wrong. Anyway, it was fine, as dreams went. There hadn’t even been anyone else in there with him. No dread visitations, just your garden-variety terrible memory. He dragged a hand over his face, felt the stubble coming up, was momentarily shocked by the jut of his tusks over his lower lip. His heart wasn’t even beating that fast. It was fine.

“Rough night?” someone said.

“Now why would you ask that,” he said.

“Aw,” Caduceus said mildly, leaning out of the shadow of the trees, “no reason.”

He was standing a little way up the rise on the windward side of camp. Through the amber cast of the dome Caleb had popped up in the hollow, he looked sallow and peculiar and still, by virtue of being another awake person, incredibly welcome. Fjord got to his feet. All around him the others were sacked out in various attitudes of chaos and exhaustion. He had to step carefully, avoiding outflung hands and deadly weapons and outflung hands that were deadly weapons. He went to Caduceus before he could think too much about it.

The film of the dome tickled his face and hands as he passed through. Outside, the black sky was shading toward gray. No doubt Caleb could mark the hour and minute, but to Fjord it felt like luminous nontime, suspended. Which altogether sucked, because he could really stand to see the sun right now.

“What are you doing up, anyway?” he asked.

Caduceus gestured toward the place where he’d been sitting. His incense burner smoked gently amid a ring of flesh-pink mushrooms, which hadn’t been there when they’d gone to sleep. The wind reversed; the smell of camphor hit Fjord’s nose. With it came—not a scent, but a sudden sense of green-growing life, of rushing water and turned earth. It hit him like a bolt to the chest, which was ridiculous. He missed it as soon as it was gone.

“Wayfinding,” Caduceus said, while Fjord bit back a number of questions, including:

_Could anyone learn to do that_

_Can you put in a good word for me, you know, if your goddess happens to have some spare time on her hands_

_Does it help_

“Learn anything useful?” he said.

Caduceus thought about it. This took him the better part of a minute. “It all finds its place eventually,” he said. “Even if the signs don’t make sense in the moment. I’ve got to trust in her, as she trusts in me.”

“Not so much, then, huh,” Fjord said.

Cad deflated a bit. Silence. “I _have_ the trust,” he said finally, mostly to himself. “I just need to think.”

It came back to Fjord, then, that Caduceus had spent years alone among the dead before he’d joined them. Years alone with his trust, and presumably his thoughts also. Fjord was not sure what it had gotten him.

“It’ll come to you,” he said bracingly, because if he knew one thing it was how to be bracing. He didn’t clap Caduceus on the shoulder. He wasn’t that sleep-deprived. “Hey—it’s more or less morning, how about you make us some tea?”

“Ah,” Caduceus’ face lifted into a slow smile—he always did it that way, with his whole face, the long lashes and the furred ears and the corners of his mouth all rising, and the eyes warm. “You know, that’s a very good idea. You’re not against something sweet, yeah?”

“Sure,” said Fjord, who drank what he could get for cheap, whenever he could get it.

“What about musicians? Several generations of lute players, specifically.” Caduceus said.

“I want to say I don’t know what you mean, but I’m afraid I do. Please don’t elaborate,” Fjord said. But Caduceus was already fishing a tiny canister from his belt. He unscrewed the top and held it under Fjord’s nose. The smell that drifted from it was crisp and vegetal. Fjord had smelled a lot of dry leaves, and it was definitely dry leaves.

“The Sternbrights,” Caduceus said dreamily. “Old family. They brought their dead down with songs every time. Their plot’s shaded in the height of summer, and the yield is consistently lovely.”

“Is _all_ your tea made from dead people,” Fjord said.

“...Is that a trick question?” Caduceus said.

“You know what, forget I asked,” Fjord said. “Sternbrights. Sure. Let’s.” He smiled at Caduceus to disguise the fact that he was having an emotion about it. Not about dead people tea, as such—he was getting over that. About things that came from somewhere, and belonged somewhere, and were treasured because of it.

Caduceus smiled back at him in a way that communicated both his approval of Fjord’s approval and the fact that he found Fjord as see-through as a tide pool. That was the problem with him, his attention moved at speeds too glacial to be deflected.

“A moment,” he said. “Would you stoke up the fire?”

Fjord went to stoke up the fire. Caduceus passed back into the dome, moving still silently among the others. In a few moments he came back out with his tea set and a piece of woven cloth. He laid the cloth out beside the fire, filled and hung the kettle, arrayed the pot and cups as gravely as though they were mourner’s tokens.

Fjord watched him push leaves into the pot with a wooden scoop. In darkness his vision was nearly monochrome, but he knew from daylight memory that the ceramic was sea green, ticked with paler color like the pelt of a woodland animal. The water rumbled gently on the waking fire.

Fjord shut his eyes for a second, two seconds, three—it was all right, it was too dark for anyone to see. It was all right, if it was Caduceus who saw. The seawater of his dream bled off him. The heat of the fire warmed his face. He opened his eyes.

Caduceus was looking into the kettle. He was either checking on the water or peering beyond the veil that separated being and unbeing, its mysteries to unfold. He did both with equal regularity and pretty much the same expression, so it was no use guessing.

“Is it ready?” Fjord said, because he had a fatal inability to not say things. Cad’s gaze slid over toward him.

“Nearly,” he said. “The bubbles get bigger, when it’s hot enough.” He replaced the kettle on the fire.

The next time he removed it, he poured water into both cups, let it sit and send its curls of steam skyward for a few moments. Then he emptied both cups into the pot and topped it off with a last slosh from the kettle. Minutes passed. They were minutes in which Fjord was not drowning, reliving drowning, or having his dreams accosted by a many-eyed sea serpent who couldn’t take no for an answer, so he was good with it. He was almost disappointed when Caduceus poured the tea.

The first sip surprised him. It was sweet without sweetness, drying, bizarrely juicy. The second sip: more drying, more fruit, sunshine and the mild pucker of green grape-skins. He smacked his lips. “ _Lute_ players?” he said.

“Yeah,” Caduceus said, with all affection, probably remembering how he and his family had buried them. The Clays were strangers to Fjord but he knew they had done it with tenderness, because they were the people Caduceus had come from. And Caduceus was—himself, relentlessly.

Caduceus sipped his own tea slowly. “The leaves are sun-dried and crushed by hand,” he said. “Then baked for a little bit after that, to fix the decay. Actually,” a minute hesitation. A sag to his shoulders. “Clarabelle did most of this batch. It was her first time helping out.”

“Your sister,” Fjord said.

“The littlest,” Caduceus confirmed.

“Well,” Fjord said, “she should be proud. You can tell her I said so, when you’re all home again.”

However long that would be. If she and the rest of the Clays were still out there, somewhere, under the sun and the eye of their Mother, walking some road that they all trusted would make sense eventually. Fjord took a too-big gulp of his tea; it burned a little. No icy water forcing its way down his throat this time. “No—scratch that,” he said. “I’ll tell her myself, when I meet her.”

His reward for this gross optimism: Cad’s smile again, broad and dry and sweet. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

“What, you don’t trust me?” Fjord said.

“I do,” Caduceus told him, with mountainlike calm.

There was nothing he could say to that, so he knocked back the rest of his tea. He held out his cup again, and Caduceus filled it. He would fill it as many times as Fjord asked.

**Author's Note:**

> the tea in question is bai mudan, and I choose to believe it tastes great when you grow it from dead people


End file.
